Magnetic field sensing locating devices (interchangeably referred as “locating devices”, “utility locators”, or simply “locators”) have been used for many years to locate utilities that are buried or obscured from plain sight. Such conventional locating devices are generally hand-held locators capable of sensing magnetic fields emitted from hidden or buried utilities (e.g., underground utilities such as pipes, conduits, or cables) or other conductors and processing the received signals to determine information about the conductors and the associated underground environment.
Such conventional locating devices, though useful, fail to uniquely and precisely identify buried utilities in situations where a wide variety of buried utilities are installed in close proximity to each other. Also, such conventional locating devices often detect “false” locate signals in instances where several other above-ground or underground metallic objects are installed in vicinity of the buried utilities due to interference caused by such surrounding objects. Accordingly, there is a need in the art to address the above-described as well as other problems.